Phone call from Shane Warne’s agent landed the late cricket legend $1million

03/11/2022

Shane Warne's huge popularity across the world once helped him to make more than $1million in a single phone call from his agent.

The spinner shot to stardom in the 1990s with his incredible international performances for Australia, and earned his status as one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year as early as in 1994.

Three years later he was named by the same publication as the Leading Cricketer in the World, and transcended the sport through a mixture of his strong personality and a series of off-field scandals.

Having become a bona-fide celebrity as well as an incredible cricket player, Warne was in huge demand come the turn of the century.

He was playing in a Test series in Sri Lanka in 1999 when he got a phone call from his agent Michael Cohen which ended up making him a massive amount of money.

Warne has already been offered a truck load of commercial deals, but he was about to learn of one of his most lucrative yet.

UK-based agent Cohen informed him in that phone call that, as well as a big-money offer from an English first-class team, there were also some media offers which would see him make a lot of cash.

He detailed the phone call in his autobiography 'No Spin', which was published in 2018.

"Michael called with an offer of 150,000 pounds from Hampshire, plus car, house and flights," Warne wrote. "Then there was a radio deal. Six shows at 500 pounds a pop.

"There was an agreement with The Times for 10 columns at 12,000 pounds each and a 200,000 pound book deal to tell my story so far with Hodder and Stoughtoun.

"500,000 pounds in one phone call!"

With the exchange rate at the time, that amount would have been the equivalent of around $1.25m.

It was one of the earlier big-money deals which helped Warne to amass a large fortune, before his shock death at the age of 52 last Friday in Thailand.

The Australian reportedly had a wealth of around $50m, which had been built up through media deals, product endorsements and successful businesses.

One of the most lucrative of the lot came from his time with Indian Premier League franchise the Rajasthan Royals later in his career.

That "retirement" job, where he acted as team captain and a coach, turned out to be worth $657,000 per year in his annual salary alone, which he took for four seasons while on the books.

When Warne left the team in 2012, he kept a three per cent stake in the franchise which was only going up in value.

After predicting that the team would one day be worth $400m in 2019, the Aussie declared: "Three per cent of $400m is alright."

The Royals were worth around $340m by July 2021, meaning Warne's small stake would have been the equivalent of around $10m.

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